Hangover hyperbole

Anne Hathaway says that she would be an alcoholic had she not become an actress. She claims that the last time she drank she had a five-day hangover.

Do such things really exist? Or is that Hollywood hyperbole?

when you are young, hangovers last for about half an hour, or the time it takes to digest a fry up, an aspirin and a mug of tea. Later, you need a morning off, a fistful of ibruprofen, a boiled egg (umph, actually, no, take that away from me) or a Coca Cola.

Bridget Jones (pictured) had to face Una and Geoffrey Alconbury’s new year’s Day turkey Curry Buffet with a raging hangover, and we all know that they are intense and brutal, not ponderous and slow.

It is more like an axe in the skull complete with thudding eyeballs or, as evelyn waugh had it: ‘waking up, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of morning.’

But lasting for five days like a cold or a bad thought? never.